To send content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about sending content to .

To send content to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services.
Please confirm that you accept the terms of use.

In September 2009, Turkey experienced a major reform of its pharmaceutical expenditure and price policy. By introducing a global budget, Turkey saved some 20 billion TL in public pharmaceutical expenditure in the 2010–2012 period. The lion’s share of this was achieved by introducing stricter price controls that reduced the profit margins of pharmaceutical producers and distributors (the populist policy solution), rather than by privatizing the cost of medicines through, for example, raising out-of-pocket payments (the neoliberal policy solution). This is a puzzle, given the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) government’s usual preference for lenient and business-friendly regulation. This article explains the policy reform with reference to (i) the pronounced electoral interests of the AKP’s political leadership in not substantially reducing access to public health services, (ii) the absence of powerful business interests in high medicine prices, and (iii) the absence of a developmentalist commitment to an industrial policy strategy for the pharmaceutical sector. This case study holds important lessons for scholars of Turkish politics. It suggests that externally the AKP’s economic and social policies are driven by the interests of its two major constituencies (namely, lower-class voters and “Anatolian capital”), while internally they are shaped by two camps of policy makers (namely, neoliberal-minded technocrats and election-focused party leaders).

Recommend this

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.